The American Warrior Show is, in my opinion, one of the best self-defense oriented podcasts going. The host is Mike Seeklander, probably known to many of you as a co-host on the Outdoor Channel’s show The Best Defense. Mike is a great host and always covers great topics. I listen to all of the episodes of this podcast and I highly recommend it.

Anyway, A few weeks ago Mike Seeklander interview an author named Mike Wood, who wrote a book about the Newhall shooting. For those of you not familiar, the Newhall shooting was an incident that occurred in 1970 that left four California highway patrol officers dead after they pulled over two felons during a highway stop. This particular incident was a major upset in law enforcement history and it ushered in some changes, similar to the 1986 FBI shootout in Miami and the North Hollywood shootout in 1997.

I have read many accounts about Newhall over the years, it gets written about every once in a while and many of the better known firearms writers have dealt with it. Mike Wood has written a full-length book about it so obviously he is a foremost authority on it as he has done the research. It is a tragic but fascinating incident. In this interview with Mike Wood I learned a few things about the incident that I never knew before despite reading many articles in the past about it (now I am tempted to read the book).

One of the reasons this shootout is well known, and the primary reason it seems to be referenced, is one of the officers killed was executed while struggling to reload his revolver from a dump pouch, which means loading rounds one at a time. This event caused a great stir and old-time lawmen are familiar. The 1986 Miami shootout is the watershed moment that ushered in the demise of the revolver in law enforcement, but Newhall really pointed to the limitation of the weapon, especially if being carried with no speedloaders or backup guns.

However, there was a new and interesting takeaway for me after listening: It all started with a road rage confrontation. I never knew that facet about this event before. The conversation turns to this lesson later in the podcast but as soon as it was mentioned early on I was amazed. Apparently road rage is not a 21st Century phenomena, they were doing it in the 70s.

Here is yet another reminder why as armed and capable citizens we need to turn away from slights from other drivers on the road. If someone does something on the highway that makes you mad MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS! Don’t get out of the car and cause a confrontation. Leave such nonsense to the modern Beta Males that surround you, let them yell at each other for cutting one another off in their BMWs. Carrying the skillset and the tool to take life should make you go out of your way to avoid any confrontation that could lead to the need to do so. In this particular incident a bit of road rage lead to an unforeseen tragedy.

Anyway, that was the most interesting new wrinkle in this incident for me to learn. If you have a chance give this podcast a listen, it is excellent. Here is the link: